Crystal Storm was a little slower than previous instalments, but shit if the endiI just...

I can't with this series. And I can't because it is SO GOOD.

Crystal Storm was a little slower than previous instalments, but shit if the ending wasn't explosive. In fact, it was fucking harrowing. Basically, don't even talk to me about the ending.

(view spoiler)[Someone needs to find Kurtis and kill him in like a really disgusting way because nobody gets to torture my trash king sweetheart Magnus and live to tell of it. I swear to god, when they put the lid on that coffin and began to bury him, my stomach turned and I threw up in my mouth a little bit. Burying people alive is another level of sick shit.

Remember the alchemist guy that Sam and Dean buried alive in season 3 of Supernatural? Yeah, he was a dick who went around murdering people for his unhygienic organ harvest but I still ended up feeling sorry for him when they buried him alive. It just makes my skin crawl. (hide spoiler)]

It's a testament to how unbelievably enjoyable these books are that I'm dishing out four stars, despite all of the errors in editing (punctuation marks missing, whole words missing, characters' names spelled wrong, you get the idea) and the frequently unnatural stilted dialogue. The writing is as simplistic as it always has been, and not in a good way, but who cares when the story is as gripping as this? This series is one whose flaws I really don't give a shit about, because I love it so much. And I never expected to love it. But I came to know it's heart. (view spoiler)[Like Cleo came to know Magnus's. Jesus christ, I'm getting all emotional. (hide spoiler)]

Look, all I can say is that I'm choking for the next one and crushed that it's not out tomorrow. Why is it not out tomorrow? Balls....more

**spoiler alert** Augghhhhhh. I loved this book so much, so it's agonizing that I can't give it five stars. But I'm sticking to my guns: I have to doc**spoiler alert** Augghhhhhh. I loved this book so much, so it's agonizing that I can't give it five stars. But I'm sticking to my guns: I have to dock a star, first for the incredibly abrupt ending, the pacing lag (we could have spent less time meandering in the last third and more time developing the initial romance), and the really annoying misogyny in the first portion of the book:

"I'd rather spread ideas than legs," I hissed back. "But I doubt you would agree--"

Why was that necessary. It just really wasn't. And it's so weird because the rest of the book is dominated by a heroine who, while initially lacking in personality, develops into a capable, strategic, sympathetic character that I grew very fond of. She was also not at all prudent and shared a close relationship with her headstrong sister, Gauri, and on top of all of that, she ended up sympathizing with and actually being extremely merciful to her villainous ex-sister. I just really wish someone had caught this and edited it out because it seriously irritated me and it was extremely unnecessary.

This book wasn't particularly well received, and I actually do understand why a lot of people didn't care for it. It's perplexing in places, extremely surreal, but I liked that; it didn't bother me that some things happened just because. For me, it was such an atmospheric, absorbing read, beautifully written and full of soul. It was also incredibly authentic, proving exactly how important #ownvoices reads really are. The infusion of Indian mythology felt real, earthy and magical and beautifully unique.

It took me a while to warm to the hero, Amar, but somehow he crept up on me, and there was one moment of startling clarity in which I just surrendered and realised that I was probably as much in love with him as Mayavati was. It was one small passage, this one:

"The doors were flung open and as I stumbled past the entrance, I saw Amar bent over the tapestry. A crown of blackbuck horns gleamed on his head, cruel and slick. In the dark, they looked blood-tinged. His hands roamed over the threads, fingers flicking, yanking, snarled in strands that he pulled out in swift, merciless strokes like he was tearing out throats instead of threads."

I think it was the pure atmosphere of this scene, the absurdity and the darkness of it, the slow and terrifying unveiling of Amar as the Dharma Raja, that just knocked me right back. I read that passage above, and suddenly, I loved him. Because this book, without really stating it plainly, makes its case--death is not evil, and nor is it merciful. It just is what it is. It's a part of nature. This, proven in the story of Nritti, who in the end was not cast in a light of evil or nastiness, but of pity. She tried to cheat death, and that's not how death works, and so she wasn't a villain, really, but a person lost in grief.

A lot of people hated the talking horse, but I adored her. A lot of people hated the writing, but for me it worked. I think this book is really a love it or hate it thing, but it took me on a journey. I wasn't even aware that I was reading a Hades/Persephone retelling until well over halfway through, but that's not shocking, because half of the time when I'm reading retellings I don't actually realise it until I've been smacked in the face with it. I didn't realise that A Court of Mist and Fury was a Hades/Persephone retelling either, but for me this worked so much better as a retelling, because it felt like a fairytale. It was written with the right air of constant magic, whereas ACOMAF felt fanfictiony, the protagonists wafting around with all of their airs and graces and all of it written so jarringly like a modern coffee shop AU romance.

It's maybe a weird comparison to make, The Star-Touched Queen versus ACOMAF, but I kept thinking about it, that Rhysand was meant to be Hades but his character is nowhere near as grey and dark as Amar's, while at the same time being sympathetic. I think it was the total neutrality of Naraka that really intrigued me - Maya isn't running away from evil Bharata and into the arms of some bland Good Guy Prince Charming that we've all seen a thousand times before. She also isn't going to be a queen who flounces around a kingdom in fancy dresses, collecting taxes and boasting her prowess (Feyre, because don't pretend that any of the Night Court royals have actual jobs. All Feyre did all day was wander around the art quarter in a fancy cashmere sweater). Maya loves Amar but she also loves her work, and she wants to be queen of Naraka not just as the wife of the Dharma Raja, but as part of a cosmic balance. She isn't just a wife or a lover, she is a co-ruler. The job she is taking on is imperative to the existence of life itself and it's this she's fighting for, not just for the love of her king.

Overall, a stunning read. It took me places, transported me, and that's exactly what I want from high fantasy. I want a journey, something surreal and inspired and completely unique. Roshani Chokshi makes real magic with her words. ...more

**spoiler alert** The first book was a fun caper; this one felt like a bad fever dream. God's sake, HOW is it possible to write such a tone-deaf, irre**spoiler alert** The first book was a fun caper; this one felt like a bad fever dream. God's sake, HOW is it possible to write such a tone-deaf, irresponsible, waffling protagonist? And Ash! Ash, go to hell! The dude is a hired companion and yet he has the cheek - the bare-faced cheek! - to talk about "common prostitutes" as if they're worthless! This dude telling us all about how awful it is to be a sex worker, talking shit about other sex workers whose job is EVEN MORE dangerous than his! And who are at far more risk than he is!* I knew from the first book when Ash guilted Violet into backtracking on the only smart decision she made (to break up with him) that he was a sack of shit, but damn, he's a piece of work in this one.

*Of course, the "common prostitutes" are women, and the companions are all male, and Ash is a misogynist, so the mystery of why he feels that the companions are superior to other sex workers is effectively solved. I hate Ash.

And by the way, this is the most poorly organised revolution ever: people [fucking Ash!] are given really important positions even when they aren't qualified for them, just so that their feelings don't get hurt. Should it not be Violet, who has actual magical powers, leading the charge? Oh, but no! Then Ash might cry his tiny male tears. We have to all make sure that he feels important, even if it fucks up the uprising and gets us all killed.

This book isn't boring - the pacing of this series is remarkably, brilliantly fast - but the plot is so flaccid. The plot just cannot get it up. Maybe it drank too much or it's just not in the mood. But shit, guys; you're going to have to do better than 250 pages of filler, a totally random colonisation backstory that makes no genetic sense, and then a mindless cliffhanger that we'd all give ten times as many shits about if Hazel had been more to us than a lump of bloody chalk thus far. I couldn't care less if I tried.

The only character I liked was Lucien. He had the good sense to hate Ash and to keep secrets from Violet, who is such a dumbshit that it's sheer luck that she's even still alive. He was smart and his backstory was fucking tragic, but I guess we're supposed to hate him because he doesn't indulge the self-importance of these thick teenagers? Bonus points to Ash for making fun of the fact that Lucien's body has been mutilated, not once but twice! Oh, Ash.

I'll give the last book four stars if Ash dies. Five if Lucien kills him....more

I cried all of my water in my body away. I cried because I fell in love withNever.

Never ever.

Never ever ever has a book left me feeling so dehydrated.

I cried all of my water in my body away. I cried because I fell in love with a teenaged hacker and because I also fell in love with a computer processor, and "she runs one gloved hand over the console in her arms. All of me she can hold."

(view spoiler)[And when they wafted off into space together, and I thought that was the end, it was also the end of me.

But it wasn't the end; the end was a relief, and not as bleak as I thought it might have been. (hide spoiler)] But this book is the best book I have read in - I don't know how long. Ages. And it's because of this. It is so tactile, so real, so unbelievably absorbing and emotionally charged.

It's the story of Kady, mainly, and a little bit Ezra - but mostly Kady. Kady and Ezra's planet, Kerenza IV, is razed by a super corporation that's thirsting for the crap that they're illegally mining. So the people of Kerenza flee on a fleet of ships controlled by an artificial intelligence program titled AIDAN, only to be pursued by the invaders who want to wipe out the witnesses of their genocide on Kerenza IV.

From there it's a cat and mouse game, but it's also virus horror, and romance, and pure science fiction beauty, all wrapped up in a package of what it means to be human. That pathetic tagline is pasted all over a lot of books who are about as deep as a kiddie pool, but this book means it. This book doesn't take what it means to be human and make it all about "well I took a bullet for my crush". This book plants a tense seed and lets it build, and build, and build, and build, until it explodes, and amid that explosion is some of the most skillfully conceived and emotionally dense dialogue I've read, maybe ever. That dialogue exists between a human girl and an AI system. They explore each other and grow together and they pluck at questions of humanity and genocide and family and friendship, and I'm kind of crying just thinking about it. This book is so powerful. This book has hit me like a punch.

Don't you dare look at this book and see a gimmick: it's a beautifully built piece of art. It's a fusion of storytelling and design. It is absolutely beautiful to look at and absolutely staggering in its conception. It's told in scraps, in reports and files and instant messaging, in the stuttering soul of a confused AI and small diary entries from an incredible heroine. This heroine is flawed in her character but flawless in her making. She's strong and cynical and bright, rash and reckless and frightening, a brilliant girl. I love her.

I can't believe it took me so long to pick this book up. I can't believe I hesitated. It was just amazing. ...more

Okay, so do you guys remember when I read Shadow and Bone and I thought the plot was kinda cool, I liked the side characters, I liked the heroine - IOkay, so do you guys remember when I read Shadow and Bone and I thought the plot was kinda cool, I liked the side characters, I liked the heroine - I got on board with her weird morality and can-do attitude - but I fucking hated Mal? (I'm writing this on my phone and iOS 10 actually just autocorrected 'Mal' to 'anal' which is basically the gist of it.) Well guess what.

Round two. Motherfucking Montgomery.

This tool. THIS guy. I swear to fucking god. I actually loved Juliet, because she spoke to me and I related to her and she was proactive and she deeply valued her friendship with another woman who was very different than her, but all of it is overshadowed by her completely bewildering infatuation with Montgomery.

He is the absolute worst character in this book. He was agonising to read about. A little piece of me died every time he was mentioned. And he's so unnecessary; this book is so incredibly original (and extremely well-written, paced beautifully and very deft in its retelling of the 'classic' it's based on) but Montgomery is the typical childhood friend turned bland lover that we've seen about 16,000 times before in YA. There is nothing convincing about his feelings about Juliet or about her love for him. And it sullied my feelings for Juliet, because she was smart and sharp and sometimes brutal, but she let herself fall in stupid love with this dumb asshole. Juliet, pull your fucking self together! Fuck.

In some ways, this book belongs to Edward; he is far and away the most captivating character. I loved him. He was dark and weird and sad, and I related to him, as strange as that sounds. He got me right in the feels, guys. The revelation concerning Juliet's nature felt a little flat to me - like, I was surprised, sure, but it didn't feel as shocking as I think it was meant to. But Edward? By god, chaps! That one knocked me right off my chair!

This book was a nice deviation from your typical Victorian fare: there's nothing stuffy or boring aboutit, and I fucking hate the Victorians because they're stuffy and boring. I can't stand them. But this book feels...fresh. It feels sprightly and inspired and innovative. I like that it's morally grey and that its heroine has the capacity to be an incredibly kind person but also very ruthless as well. Juliet really, really grabbed me, guys. (Except when she was hanging around that fucking cock Montgomery. What a stupid prick. I want to punch his fugly face.)

I moan, I bitch, I complain. I kid, too. This was actually an incredibly enjoyable read. Dark and twisty and not afraid to be itself. I seriously admire the author for reinventing not only a less well-known 'classic' but also for making it completely her own and by taking thematic risks. This book is not afraid to be gory and weird, and it doesn't shy away from brutality, or from questioning substantial themes like morality and humanity and the blurred lines of family, particular the unfathomable complexity of a father-daughter relationship. It was a nice surprise for me.

One part boring, three parts thrilling, and beautifully written. It's a shame I hated Lada and Mehmed so much. Like, the thought of them now makes myOne part boring, three parts thrilling, and beautifully written. It's a shame I hated Lada and Mehmed so much. Like, the thought of them now makes my eye twitch. Radu deserves better.

...because lezbehonest, guys, that's basically the premise of this book. Though that sentence is pretty bloody ironic considering th**spoiler alert**

...because lezbehonest, guys, that's basically the premise of this book. Though that sentence is pretty bloody ironic considering this, and Maas's other series A Court of Thorns and Roses, are pretty much the most hetero books I've ever read.

I think sometimes people misunderstand the meaning of this statement: "It's so hetero". There are a couple of very small, have-to-squint-to-see-them, barely-there queer characters in this, two of whom we met for about two pages in Heir of Fire, another who has about three speaking lines and is shoe-horned into the finale just so that he can rescue his straight cousin's straight ass, and also Aedion, who casually mentions his bisexuality while he's hitting on a cis woman, coincidentally trying to make her feel better about her past as a "prostitute"*.

There's a lot of strange sexual dichotomies in these books, a lot of problematic romantic relationships with extremely uneven power dynamics, but the hetero-ness is something I can't shake off. I think that maybe being a non-hetero person myself makes it feel more overwhelming; it's that there's absolutely no gay sensibility to these books. There's no subtext, no fluidity, no capacity for queerness in any of the characters or their actions - even Aedion, to me, feels like a white flag that Maas raised after all of the hullabaloo around the lack of diversity in her books.

"Here's a queer character!" she cries. "Here he is!"

Aedion being romantically linked to a woman doesn't make him any less bisexual. It does not diminish his queerness. But it's a missed opportunity, I think. Do we need any more cis male-female relationships gumming up these pages? To boot, do we need any more beautiful people falling in love with other beautiful people, and making sweet, beautiful love?

I feel like this picture, which never ever fails to make me laugh and also feel extremely disappointed, gives a better idea of what I mean by this lack of "gay sensibility":

These two men are definitely inspecting the grass. Details unknown. No, we don't know what's going on here, because it's definitely not two queer men having a jolly time together, rolling around in nature because nature is super romantic. Nope!

This is what I think of when I consider two specific characters in this series: Manon and Dorian. First of all, don't try and tell me Manon is straight. Don't even bother. She hates men and she turned on her entire family, her whole witch tribe, to save Asterin's life. She was also super fucking close to Elide in QoS, so don't fucking stand there and lie through your tea-stained teeth, trying to tell me that this asshole isn't a lesbian. Don't even bother.

(Also don't even get me started on the stupid Crochan thing. Are you kidding me with this?)

But I guess Maas thinks that Manon and Asterin were just really good grass inspectors, because Manon is now suddenly down for kinky sex...with Dorian? Now, oddly, I actually don't have that big a problem with these two - I was under no foolish assumptions that we would actually be gifted with a well-rounded and visible lesbian character after four other books of total straight-out - but it just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. There's Dorian, too, who was a big fan of inspecting grass when it came to Chaol, and I have a feeling folk will be rolling their eyes at this, because friendship is important and shouldn't be cast aside as less intense or less important as romantic relationships, but jeez. How hard is it just to throw us a fucking bone, dude? (That pun wasn't initially part of my plan, but I like it too much to chuck it away.)

I wrote in the ACOMAF review that that book was straight as fuck, and I don't know why I was expecting Maas to actually deliver on her promise of "a gay male couple" in this book. Where the fuck is this gay couple? Is it Darrow and the dead king? Because girl bye. After Half Lost, I am done with this Bury Your Gays shit. I am so fucking over it. And Darrow is also painted as a nasty prick, even though everything he said to Aelin was pretty much true and fair enough. As an anti-monarchist, I can't be okay with this upstart pampered brat marching back to Terrasen and claiming that she's ready to run the country even though she has no idea where to even start. She couldn't even rally an army; she bought her troops from Ansel, which is a cop-out because we should not be forced to read the novellas in order to understand what's going on in the main series. I've read them, but I buddy-read this with my girl Ally, who hasn't, and she had no idea what the hell that whole thread was about. Look, novellas are fine, pretty useless but okay, but this reminds me of City of Heavenly Fire where it was all big deal, high stakes when Jem and Tessa arrived on the scene and I had no fucking clue who they were because I hadn't read Clockwork Stuff.

It's cheeky to expect your readers to have to scour through every single piece of offshoot writing you've ever spat out in order to understand what's going on in your main ongoing series. What is that? It's called capitalism and it's sinister as fuck.

*I have issues with the way sex workers are depicted in a lot of fantasy media, and they've popped up a lot more in fantasy YA of late. The problem with this is that authors skate right over them; they're plot devices or stage dressing or Tragic and Very Sad! and in need of saving by our Pure and Charitable leads. Lysandra was a character that I actually really liked here but she's still basically there just to save straight Aelin's straight ass and to be a sexy puppet whenever we need her. There's talk of bars full of "whores" and "harlots" and for fuck's sake, what is the deal with YA fantasy authors and their disdain for sex workers? I can't think of a YA fantasy book where sex workers are anything but charity cases or window dressing. There's no actual discourse around it and there's absolutely zero respect for this line of work, which is old as dirt and not going away any time soon. It's not a joke and sex workers are not a footnote for your skeevy bar scene. This is emphasized even more when we find out Lysandra's role in Aelin's plan, which is of course a sexual one. There's also the fact that after Lysandra saves everyone by nearly dying in Skull's Bay, Aelin doesn't even have the goddamn common decency to go to her and say sorry and make sure she's okay. Instead, she goes and fucks Rowan on a beach because that's classic Aelin in a nutshell, isn't it?

After reading this, it's very clear to me that consistent characterization is something that Maas really struggles with. While I quite enjoyed Dark Dorian, this side of him came completely out of nowhere. I get that some dark shit's gone down but there's absolutely no build up to this, and nor is there any internal monologue to explain it. One moment Dorian was a cinnamon roll and the next he's...I don't know, like a stick of gross black liquorice? What a terrible metaphor. But guise, it's trufax.

There's also Aelin, who danced nicely along the fine line between badass and brat in the first three books, but who has chucked herself right over that line in these last two books. It's as if Heir of Fire never even happened. Who is this woman? Well, she's selfish, and she's self-righteous, and agonizingly entitled. This isn't the Celaena that I fell in love with, which is troubling. She was a character I wanted to follow, one who dug me with her hooks, but since the beginning of QoS, this Aelin creature has felt like a total stranger.

It's this constant deception, and being so pleased with herself, and how absolutely everything has to be all about her and how amazing and powerful and sexy she is. How can anyone possibly relate to her? This is my number one problem with this book: Aelin is totally unrelatable and therefore extremely difficult to read about. I think this is why the sex scene, which was meant to be so poignant and beautiful, left me with an extremely bad taste in my mouth. I know there are a lot of people who are weirdly disturbed by the sex scenes, which is absurd, because those same people had no problems with the scene where Sorscha was beheaded or where Archer got gutted or where Celaena found Nehemia's body mutilated in her bed. Not to be a Sensible Soapbox Natalie, but it's a weird world where the natural harmless act of consensual sex bothers you more than extreme and frankly quite perverted violence.

That said, the Rowan/Aelin sex scene was cringe, because it was just two beautiful people having beautiful sex and being so beautiful and perfect. Again, there is absolutely nothing relatable about this in the slightest. Who actually wants to read a sex scene like this? It actually made me feel really really othered, very uncomfortable, because it was just a strange unattainable fantasy in which these two eternal and powerful beings engaged in an act that didn't even read like sex, but more of a glittery display of their prowess, showing off how strong and perfect they are to each other. Even through all of the declarations of love, there was nothing loving about it. It felt stilted, the dialogue agonizing, their bodies perfectly proportioned and somehow not hairy (???) like a pair of marble statues knocking together. Again, how is this romantic? It's not. It's actually pretty bleak.

I know I've banged on about it before, but this trope of beauty worship just grinds the shit out of my gears. I hate it; it's demoralizing and alienating. I hate reading books that are full of beautiful people, particularly when all of those people are whiter than mayonnaise. Literally the only two existing people of colour in this entire series are dead (Nehemia) and absent (Nesryn). Even with this blatant whitewashing aside, this world is build so unrealistically of people with long slender legs and muscled chests and perfect hair. YA has broken so many barriers before, so why are we still lying down and accepting this one? It's rampant and, like I said, alienating. The best parts of fantasy are the parts that remind us of reality, and reality isn't like this. Reality is diverse and flawed and nothing like this, nothing at all.

It's also hugely disturbing that this book relies so heavily on a dichotomy between Very Male Men and Very Female Women. The women are all so awed by the physical prowess of the men, and while it's joked that the women are the ones driving the plot, this is exactly the problem: it's a joke. Oh, it's so funny that these women are powerful!

These women are powerful, yes, with their magic, but what's more powerful here is the gender binary, circling back to the theme of extreme heterosexuality. The men all "growl" and bite the women they've "claimed" and it's so incredibly backward, nothing that I expected from this series that started out with such a strong and subversive female protagonist (even if there was an element in the first book of Celaena not being "like other girls"). But here we have lots of women with perfect breasts who make their coy little jokes and have perfect sex with gruff, muscled men. This book is a hotbed of toxic masculinity, full of men sexually subduing their partners, predators to their female prey. The women run, and the men chase them. Like I said, it's so poisonously hetero. I just don't get the appeal of these brooding, angry, unpredictable men who throw their weight around while the women put up with it. Even Aelin, who's supposed to be so strong, seemingly has no issue with Rowan charging around like a dog in heat, practically peeing a circle around her, trying not to attack other men who glance at her. That sort of controlling, obsessive behaviour is very, very problematic and it really got my back up because Sam, Aelin's original love interest, was nothing like this. In fact, her relationship with Sam was the most relatable and human we've seen yet. It was the only one I was actually invested in and it all went down the shitter.

(Jesus, Sam must be turning over in his fucking grave.)

I had intended to start this review with talk of the plot, but the plot didn't happen until two thirds of the way through, and it was middling at best. I can't fault Maas's amazing ability to write a spectacular climax, for even with all of the issues I had with this book, the ending got me like a punch to the gut. It was beautifully written (in fact, for the most part, barring "velvet-wrapped steel" and everything being so "male", Maas's writing was stellar here) and emotionally weighted like none of the earlier scenes were. It was the same with Qos; I was frustrated and bored and irritated up till the finale, which healed all of the little paper cuts that the straightness and the whiteness and Aelin's brattiness and the meandering plot had left me with. But I'm not so easily cowed by this ending; my pre-review was a GIF of Jensen Ackles crying, and indeed, that was my feeling after turning the last page. But it doesn't erase the fact that QoS and EoS are very, very weak when stacked against the first three instalments.

Don't doubt that I'll be finishing this series, because it has a place in my heart. But my increasing frustration with it does make me hesitate. It does bother me that it's become something totally different, totally alien, from its original and humble beginnings. It bothers me that it's so obsessed with physicality, with beauty, with material spoils. It bothers me that it's so underhandedly negligent in terms of diversity. It just bothers me. ...more

Five motherfucking stars. Actually, no. Not five stars. Six motherfucking stars. I laughed and I cried and then I cried some more and it was one of thFive motherfucking stars. Actually, no. Not five stars. Six motherfucking stars. I laughed and I cried and then I cried some more and it was one of the better overall reading experiences I have ever had. This book has killed me and I am dead.

This is one of my favourite series ever. Ever. I cannot stress enough how good this series is. It is heartbreaking and uplifting and romantic and enchanting and complex and so, so, so worth every second of your time. I am so in love with it that it hurts me physically....more

I can feel it clogging my arteries, wearing cavities into my teeth, making my waistband tighter with eaThis book is so good, it's got to be fattening.

I can feel it clogging my arteries, wearing cavities into my teeth, making my waistband tighter with each passing page; give me the rest of this series and I'll not only swell roughly to the size of Mercury, but I'll be pretty fracking happy about it, too.

Ok, so maybe the cheese is what's bloating me, but it's been a long time since I read anything really corny, thus the Scene That Shall Not Be Named didn't stir me that much. Honestly, it just made me laugh. And that was nice. I've been reading travel memoir lately which, while dear to my heart, isn't always much of a merry jaunt down literary lane. So I'll kindly forgive my new BFF Sarah J. Mass for building up this epic Jenga tower of a plot only for it to all collapse around my childish giggling. (I'm so sorry. But a flying ghost saved you from death with the power of...wind? Please.)

Sure, this isn't the most original book ever written, but at this point, there isn't an idea alive that's one hundred per cent fresh. Who cares if Maas was inspired by other works in the YA field? She knew what she wanted to do and she did it. This book isn't even really about the whole competition of Champions: it's about Celaena and her strength of will and her very dark past and her need to do whatever is necessary to secure her freedom. And I loved that. I loved that very much. Here we have a heroine who has been trained as a weapon since the age of eight (and we find this plot device in many, I say many, a YA novel, but here it actually felt emotional. It actually had weight) and...

Okay, let's take a brief break, because I was just eating a piece of pita bread and I bit my tongue really fucking hard and I now can taste pennies.

So Celaena's a badass with a Tragic Past, but it's not the hokey sort of Tragic Past that everyone kind of cries over but in the end you just don't really care. The thing is that Celaena's such a colourful character, and my little heart breaks for her, and I fell completely in love with her from the very start. I related to her so strongly, and that's some writing skill, considering she's an assassin and I am not. (Or am I?)

Chaol is my dreamboat, and I love him, and Dorian is so painfully dull, but the romance is on the back seat just enough that it doesn't have to matter if you don't want it to. (view spoiler)[And it's okay because in the end, Celaena decides that her dream of freedom is more important than a dalliance with a prince, and that was the moment in which my eternal fealty was pledged to her. This is a heroine who is practical and who won't trade her goals to stare starry-eyed at a dude. That's important, guise, in a genre where the heroine is always the one to offer the sacrifice in order for her and her "true love" to be together - whether it's losing her humanity or killing herself or leaving her family and friends or giving up her education or giving in to having children when she doesn't want to. In this genre, women are the sacrificers, and their men look on, forlorn, "applauding" their "bravery" while remaining unchanged and ultimately only receiving without having to give at all. So that's why Celaena's dresses and her books and her little dog don't, in my eyes, make her 'annoying'. Because she takes control of her life and her sexuality and that's the sort of heroine we should be falling in love with. (hide spoiler)]

The plot fell apart a little bit towards the end, enough to knock off a star from my rating - I was rereading passages, confused about what was going on. (view spoiler)[And honestly? I don't know that I would have picked this book up if I'd known we were dealing with faeries. I don't like faeries. They irritate me. I find them dull and confusing and ultimately, their stories are too small for me. There is only so much scope when you're dealing with forest deities that lead backpackers into bogs. (hide spoiler)]That said, the good parts are mega, and the dialogue and writing hold it all together, even when it starts to hobble on shaky ground. Good save, Sarah. Good save. (view spoiler)[And to be honest, now that I'm into the story? I don't mind the faerie thing. Like, whatever. I'll get used to it for Celaena's sake. Who knows? Maybe I'll change my mind about...oh, who am I kidding. I'll try and push past it. (hide spoiler)]

So, yeah, I'll be following this series. Hell, yeah. I've already started reading Crown of Midnight, and I'll be picking up Heir of Fire when it comes out in paperback (man, hardbacks are expensive these days! Whew!).

**spoiler alert** I come away from this book with a lot of confusing feelings and straddling a very blurred line between love and...not love (hate is**spoiler alert** I come away from this book with a lot of confusing feelings and straddling a very blurred line between love and...not love (hate is way too strong a word. I didn't hate anything about this book. I don't hate anything about this series, except maybe Akiva). This book is the Heathcliff to my Cathy.

What makes this review very difficult to write is Laini Taylor herself, in that she's this amazing new breed of author who does all these weird and unusual things like being honest and writing well and not milking a cash cow. There are several interviews floating around in which she freely and openly admits that there was wish fulfillment in the creation of Madrigal and Karou and that when she sat down and wrote each of these books, particularly this one, she had no outline. She didn't even know it would be a war book (link to that interview is here).

This has the opposite effect on me that it probably should. I hate wish fulfillment, but you know what I hate more? Denying wish fulfillment. I hate this trend of, "Oh, I was just wondering what it would be like for a girl to fall in love with a vampire/angel/werewolf" and while the answer should be that the human girl would probably die or at least be in extreme danger, it's always, "And they got married and had hybrid children". That's because it's wish fulfillment, and it's obvious wish fulfillment, and it's so obvious that when those authors say, "I don't know where I got the idea" it's just an all-out lie. It's a lie. If you create a character for wish fulfillment, don't treat your audience like they're three years old. Don't lie through your teeth about it. Be like the glorious Laini Taylor, and just admit it.

The perfection behind everything Karou does in this book is wish fulfillment and it can be annoying, but it's not to the detriment of the love I have for the author. Just like Daughter of Smoke and Bone, there is such intensity and passion and heart baked into this story. It's darker than DoSaB, much darker, but I like that about it. I like that Taylor is willing to push the envelope on what YA is. This book won't make you sleep easily, and it won't warm your heart. It'll make you cry, like it did me (then again, I'm a crybaby, so don't use this as benchmark). And it's that quality of content that makes it difficult for me to pick fault with the things that did grate on me, like Karou's unrealistic perfection and the mere idea of Akiva ever atoning for the genocide he started.

This is where the problems I have with this book come in: genocide. Genocide isn't a topic to be taken lightly, and this book doesn't take it lightly at all. What it does, though, is romanticize it, not to the point of sympathy but to the point of the male hero being able to mend his mistakes by saving about 2% of the lives he destroyed, thus wooing his lover, whose family he murdered.

It's dangerous territory to tread. On paper and in fantasy form, it's an easier pill to swallow, but if we translate that to real life, then it makes far less sense that Karou is able to think of herself as still in love with Akiva even after he destroyed literally everything she holds dear. If I think about it in the context of my life, it makes me choke: the idea of still being in love with a man, and forgiving him, after he murdered my family. Take a moment and think of it in that sense, and it does shift some things around.

Genocide isn't the only heavy topic that this book deals with a little ham-fistedly. Dealing with rape in fiction is like walking on ice thinner than your thumbnail: you've better tread very, very, very carefully or you will make a huge mistake. This book doesn't plunge right through that ice, but it does wet its feet substantially.

Here's the problems: firstly, the graphic nature of the scene. And it was graphic. And the thing is that the detailed attack itself was not the main problem, but the very real possibility of triggering. I am a very, very firm believer in trigger warnings for physical and sexual violence, which of course this book and virtually no other carries. Why not? It's not difficult to place a disclaimer page at the beginning of the book warning readers about disturbing scenes. That's not hard. That doesn't sully anyone's enjoyment of the book. What it does is protect people from reliving their experiences through something that they ought to be enjoying, not recoiling from in terror or rage.

Like I said, it wasn't the graphic nature itself that was the problem. It was being utterly blindsided by it. It made me want to put the book down, and I'm sure that's not how anyone was supposed to feel about a scene in which a heroine literally cuts down the man attacking her. Shouldn't that have been in some way empowering? Meh.

This is the other problem I had, and it was a little more of an insidious one. There's this area of ice that's even more precarious to walk on, and it's the reactionary period. It's that arc after the survivor has been attacked, and is now reacting to it, in whatever way they do. There are authors like CC who smash straight through the ice and into the depths of the frozen lake, here, having used rape as a plot device and then one page later having the heroine and her male love interest crack a silly joke about fishnets. Bookending a rape with jokes of any kind is sick and twisted and no one is fooled by any backpedaling essays that Clare writes on her Tumblr. The words are there on the page, and they are inappropriate.

The saving grace with Karou is that her attempted rape is treated very seriously, though there are problematic undertones. And they are undertones: subtleties that won't bother everyone, but that do misstep. Victimhood, for example, holds a stigma of weakness ("She looked like a victim. Raw. Brutalized" (chapter 75)) in this book, around Karou's almost-rape. Karou thinks, "She might look like a victim, but she wasn't. She had stopped him" (Chapter 75). There are two sides to this coin, one being the empowerment of Karou killing her rapist and exacting the revenge he deserves. Yes, kill all rapists. But this is tarnished by the other side, which says that victimhood is not okay, and that by fighting off her attacker, Karou distances herself from the 'weakness' of being a victim.

You see how carefully one has to tread? This is how carefully. So carefully, for every single word surrounding the topic of rape must be considered at length. Rape is such a massive problem that stretches right across our world, our whole world, and this is why it needs to be handled like an unexploded bomb.

I don't believe for a moment that there was any ill intent with this book portrayal of rape and as I said, it treated it seriously, which is more than can be said for others. But I do feel like it could have been thought out a little more, particularly the concept of victimhood. Killing one's attacker in self defense is absolutely justified...and adding a "but" to the end of that sentence is where it becomes tricky. It's easy to imply that anyone who doesn't fight off their attacker - either if they do not try, or they try but are unsuccessful - is 'weak'. They aren't. A person being raped has absolutely no obligation to stop the rape because they are not the one responsible for the rape. They do not owe it to themselves to try. They do not owe it to anyone to do anything. When we start creeping into "well, why did they just lie there?" territory, we start inviting fingers of blame that do not point at the rapist. And that is garbage. No matter what the circumstances, those fingers should never stop pointing at the rapist. They are responsible. They are responsible for it all.

Like I said, this takes a very distant sort of analysis and I don't doubt that the author simply didn't consider it. Everyone has their own view of their own work, and let me reiterate that I don't believe that there was any ill intent in this whatsoever. But these things are worth considering, and people are noticing these problems for a reason.

It's for the aforementioned reasons that I can't rate this book with five stars, despite its beautiful writing, riveting plot, and inspired mythology. Other than a few little thematic issues, it was sound in its pro-peace message, too. But it didn't have the same strange and haunting atmosphere as Daughter of Smoke and Bone, which was why I loved the first book.

That said, there's plenty to love, so don't be discouraged. I know that some people hated them, but I loved the little interjections from minor characters that we haven't met before, who were embarking upon their own lives that didn't run closely alongside Karou and Akiva and all our main friends. Sarazal and Sveva, and of course Rath, kept me up all night thinking about them. The Breakblades are inspired, and I have high hopes for the Stelians and the shit they're obviously going to stir.

Of course, though, there are few things in this book that top the infamous Ziri. Lucky Ziri. He's tragic, and his role in this book is so strange, but he's impossible not to love. I was reduced to tears several times by this book, and most of those times involved Ziri. I had to get up out of bed and go wash my face when it was revealed that Karou had been forced to bury the last true Kirin body, that precious little thing that would be lost forever. The Kirin caves are beautiful, but all of the hands that built them are lost. If there's anything sadder than that then I don't want to know about it.

Ziri's fate is strange, but serves the plot. There isn't much to be said in the way of protesting it: it is what it is, and while I find it extremely disturbing that Ziri is inhabiting the body of Karou's attempted rapist, the whole theme of this series is that souls are what matter, not the bodies who hold them. It's a theme occasionally lost to the worship of beauty - every evil character is hideous, every good one lovely - but it's there and it's obvious. Ziri's lost Kirin body doesn't really matter, because he's still Ziri, and that doesn't change because he no longer looks the way he did when he was born. Same goes for Karou. She no longer looks like chimaera, but she is. She is one of them, and that she realizes this towards the end is a beautiful piece of character development.

What else can I say? This series is truly inspired. It's what YA should be: real, raw, intelligent and meaningful. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to read Dreams of Gods and Monsters.

Because you'll need to be, too make it through this book without rolling your eyes clean out of your skull. It's cheeky, really: two brothers, saving

Because you'll need to be, too make it through this book without rolling your eyes clean out of your skull. It's cheeky, really: two brothers, saving people, hunting things. It's the family business. One of them is named JARED. There's a reluctant female hunter and a dorky dude hunter and they have to follow lore and clues in order to defeat a demon that's been going around killing their family members. I feel like there's a way for Eric Kripke to make some sort of money out of this - you know, since it's all been torn straight out of John Winchester's notebook (of which there is an Unbreakable equivalent).

I gave this book two stars because it was smooth and readable, not because there's any sort of value in it. It feels like gas station Dan Brown, even more than Dan Brown feels like gas station Wikipedia, and even more than Wikipedia feels like gas station Oxford Encyclopaedia. The heroine is mad boring, and the love interests are so scarily unappealing, and the twin thing creeps me out. Even a girl torn between two brothers feels squicky, because it's this sexual dilemma all tied up in family. At least in the CW's Vampire Diaries it was made clear than the brother thing was weird, especially with Katherine, who tried to make a triad with Damon and Stefan (may I boil myself?).

It's just all so Cruel Intentions, with the sibling rivalry and its sexual undertone and this fabulously boring girl caught up in the middle of it. Kennedy is like a Tamagochi left out in the rain. And yet her time is in such demand! And the whole conspiracy treasure hunt thing revolves around her! Yawn, fucking yawn. I've had it with the Chosen One. Or at least the Chosen One in such an obvious and unoriginal context. I fully believe that any trope, no matter how overused, can feel original if it's handled properly. This was not handled properly. This was handled like a hot bloody potato, literally thrown into the air and left to splat on the ground. Blegh.

Ugh, whatever. There are better things I could be doing than trying to justify this two-bit piece of fancy fanfiction. I could be rolling around on the floor, covered in puppies. Now that's something I could get on board with....more

What I like about Stephanie Perkins is that her books are fluffy, and they're okay with that: there's no heavy message attached to this as the authorWhat I like about Stephanie Perkins is that her books are fluffy, and they're okay with that: there's no heavy message attached to this as the author attempts to shove an after-school special down our throats. I didn't like that when I was a teenager, and I don't like it now. Sometimes I feel like that's my real problem with contemporary novels - that they want desperately to be didactic in the way that dystopia or high fantasy is but their settings are too literal to pull it off properly. But Stephanie Perkins is cool, subtle; she holds back, relaxes, and lets the story speak for itself. She trusts her readers. I like that.

Anna and the French Kiss was a strange read for me in that I'm not a contemporary fan and nor am I overly enamoured of romance, mostly because I find 85% of it to be terribly unconvincing. I'm not an overly romantic person at heart thus your story of this average straight couple who meet in the rain and face menial trials because ~one of them doesn't believe in love~ won't tickle my fancy. I expect a little more.

I expect what Stephanie Perkins gave us: a beautiful setting, atypical characters, smooth writing and a satisfying final payoff. We see Etienne and Anna get together because that's what we've been waiting for, and Perkins made us wait for it. She knew we'd love this couple, because she knew the story she was telling had enough meat to make us care.

Anna is a rich kid, but she wasn't always; she's rash and sometimes selfish, but she's a girl in love for the first time. Oftentimes I worry that adult readers who are harshly judging female leads forget that these female leads are teenagers, and when we were teenagers, we all felt like a zit or a laughing-peeing incident was the end of the world. It wasn't, but being a teenager is hard; being in that transitional phase puts enormous pressure on us as human beings. Perkins captures this well. I remember being thrilled when I was sixteen and realizing that yes, writing was something people did, and something I could do - it wasn't that I'd had success, but simply having something be certain in the waffling, uncomfortable abyss of adolescence. It was relief to me to find that I could braid my hair and wear makeup and have it look good, after struggling so hard with uncertain feelings about whether my friends really liked me or how good my grades were, whether people noticed the holes in my clothes that I couldn't afford to replace, how I fit in my broken family, how I'd ever have enough money to strike out on my own, what my face looked like, what my puberty-ravaged body looked like, my sexuality, my plans for the future, where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do. Perkins grabs hold of teenage waffling and pulls the covers off it, and she makes it romantic, yet finite. Things sometimes suck, she says, but they do get better.

I've seen a few heads shaking at the cheating aspect of this book, and I'd like to share with you a very unpopular opinion: cheating happens for a reason. Sometimes the reason is that the fuckwad you're dating is too cowardly to admit that they're not ready for commitment. Sometimes it's because the existing couple is incompatible, thus one or both of them looks elsewhere. Sometimes it's because you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette. Cheating isn't okay; it's not justifiable. But cheating, like Cheez-whiz and Nickleback, has its unsavoury reasoning.

This book, like a good series opener should, saw me clamouring to get my hands on its sequels. And I did get my hands on them; I've read them both. This is the essence of Perkins' readable, deft writing: it's moreish and addictive, easy but not simplistic. There's skill there, and it encompasses a wide audience, from teens to nostalgic adults. I, an adult*, wasn't ashamed to be seen reading this book on the terrace. (That might, though, be in part due to the beautiful and subtle covers of the UK paperbacks. That is how you create a book cover, art teams! Subtly!)

What else can I say? Stephanie Perkins rocks, and so does her writing, and her colourful cast of characters. Five stars well deserved.

*My labelling myself an 'adult' is based on age only. I am a strange vapour of a human being with a low D- in adulting. I'm really good at public transport and packing my shit into boxes but sometimes I forget how to make phone calls....more

**spoiler alert** When I was in high school, I was group-travelling across western Europe and in the interest of saving money, we forfeited airfares f**spoiler alert** When I was in high school, I was group-travelling across western Europe and in the interest of saving money, we forfeited airfares for rail and coach. This meant aching backs, exploding bladders, and as much sleep as fifteen teenagers can muster while sitting bolt-upright on a coach driving up a clay-soil hillside with no crash barrier and overzealous air conditioning.

Driving up from Rome to Paris, intent on salvaging as much daylight as possible, we took the night train. The night train! Doesn't that sound like fun? Doesn't that sound like a huge adventure?

"Best sleep I ever had," I was told. "You'll love the night train."

I was lied to. The night train was like a bad mood on rails. In fact, just replace the word "train" with "mare" because that's pretty much what it was. We were stacked four to a room the size of a coat closet and forbidden to open our suitcases until we left the train. The bathrooms were like coffins with no toilet roll and seats that kept falling off, and doors that didn't lock, and the queues for the ladies' were like the fucking Danube. It was worse than the hole-in-the-wall showers with the saloon doors in Normandy two years earlier.

When we got on the train in Rome, it was boiling hot. Even in pajamas, I was sweating. There were four duvets in our four-person room, but I was so unbelievably overheated that I donated mine to one of the other girls who complained about being freezing. The train rattled to a start, and I figured I'd get a great sleep. I'd be cool, and comfortable, and this would be the brilliant rest I was promised. Suddenly, the night train didn't seem so bad after all.

I woke up halfway though Switzerland with feet like ice and rug burn from the carpet covering on my bunk. I sat up to try to grab a sweater from my suitcase but it was stowed where I had no hope of reaching it. The window had been left open, but I didn't know how to close it.

I lay back on the bunk, sure that this was truly the worst sleep I had ever had. It was a non-sleep. It was worse than a non-sleep. It was a non-sleep with goosebumps and rug burn on my elbows, and what's more, afterwards, we spent an entire day zipping around Paris trying to keep our eyes open long enough to appreciate a dozen excruciatingly boring tour guides and this gross constant film of polluted city rain. You know, the kind that makes you feel filthy the second it touches you.

Dan Brown is that person; the one who told me I'd have a great sleep on the night train. Though instead, he told me I'd really enjoy this book and that it was a complex, mysterious thriller.

He lied, like the night train person lied. This book is the literary equivalent of rug burn on your elbows and trying to sleep in Switzerland with no fucking socks on.

This book wants you to think that it's really adventurous and spiritual and intelligent when in actual fact it's like giving your duvet away, except your duvet is money, and trying to sleep on the bottom bunk on a rickety-sounding train with a bladder full of pee and a quiet certainty that the person on the bunk above you is going to break it, and you're going to be crushed to death with no bra on in a foreign country, except the person above you is Dan Brown.

Picture this: Robert Langdon, Harvard "symbologist" (let's put a pin in that one) is called to CERN to investigate the murder of a scientist, and then discovers that the murder is connected to an ancient secret society threatening to destroy the sacred Vatican City and murder four cardinals in the name of science.

Then picture this: a bishop falls in love with a nun and they really want to bump uglies but they're supposed to be chaste so instead of having sex they decide to conceive a child (because having a child is supposedly the only alternative to sex in proving one's love for another person) by IVF and then the nun gives birth to a boy who goes on to become the Pope's camerlegno, all the while unaware that he is in fact the illegitimate son of the bloody bishop of Rome.

One of those scenarios sounds like a bestselling novel worthy of praise. The other one sounds like an episode of Nip/Tuck pencilled out on the back of a Booster Juice napkin by an intern doing pails. But both of them are true components of this garbage dump of a commercial novel that wants to think it's so clever and edgy but is in actual fact nothing but Europorn Indiana Jones fanfiction with a side of racism and just a sprinkling of good old fashioned bullshit. Because we love when certain authors twirl their mustaches and tell us all about how much stuff they know when in actual fact they can barely stumble through a single sentence without using the word "awkward" or describing someone's physical appearance with intensely invasive and sexual terms.

Can we just take a moment to discuss Vittoria? Vittoria is the daughter of the murdered priest/scientist from CERN who was creating the antimatter that went into the bomb that intends to blow up the Vatican...to some end. I'm not 100% sure if there was even a point to all of this but let's roll with that.

Vittoria as a character just kills me because not only does she constitute this massive book failing the Bechdel test, but she's this terrible walking trope of a character whose every single action is punctuated with "...the woman." Vittoria has a gun...and she's a woman. Vittoria is mad about something...and she's a woman. Vittoria is a scientist...and she's a woman. There is not a single moment wherein Vittoria's womanness is not commodified, ogled, fetishized or taken advantage of by the plethora of male characters surrounding her and patting her on the head while simultaneously noticing her tanned legs and cleavage as subtly as a baboon rubbing its bright red buttcrack up against a window at the zoo. Vittoria's only purpose as a character is to make Robert, our sanctimonious, self-righteous and highly overrated protagonist look like a hero. Is nobody else finding this insulting? Vittoria is sexualized to within an inch of her life and is then punished for it by a racially problematic villain who tries to rape her but doesn't succeed because Langdon, our plucky hero, swoops in and saves her. He is of course ultimately rewarded for this with sex because obviously, fellas, that's what's supposed to happen when you help a girl out. Held the door for her? You earned a blowjob! Helped her push her car in the snow? Expect sex! Chased away a leering predator who's making her uncomfortable? You ought to get your shot! You won, after all! Fair and square!

And if she says no? Bitch! You're in the friendzone now. You'd better cry about it because she's being so ungrateful.

We also have this terrible image of the "Hassassin" - a brown guy who's obviously evil and a sexual predator and totally perverted and twisted because...well, he's brown?

Look, we all knew this character was going to be a terrible rehash of racist Islamophobic stereotypes. At the same time as fetishizing eurocentric women's lib we have Muslim women being scoffed at for their generally more reserved culture. They're literally called "livestock" and don't try to tell me that this is all part of the evil character of the Hassassin because (a) the portrayal of the Hassassin is racist in an of itself because he is one of only two characters of colour and he is pure evil (the other character of colour is a reporter for the BBC who has absolutely no moral compass whatsoever) and he is not invested in the cause in any way, thus his involvement boils down to white Dan Brown figuring "well, he's a rapist and a terrorist, so that must make him Muslim" and (b) the majority of people in the west actually believe that Muslim female culture is like that and that feminism involves charging into their country, ripping their niqabs off while screaming "I'M WHITE AND I'M LIBERATING YOU" which is only perpetuated by this supposedly worldly, well-traveled and suave killer. Bonus points for suggesting, with this huge stereotype of a character, that Muslim men have absolutely no respect for their female counterparts and are inherent abusers. Um, yay?

(I absolutely love the lack of any research that went into portraying the BBC as the main body of press. We have these two BBC reporters looking for "scoop" and being generally tacky and invasive and this is just such an awful misunderstanding of everything that is characteristic of the BBC. British news networks are not like American news networks; they aren't jokey and cute and funny. They don't mutter about Syria for five minutes and then run a half-hour story about raccoons in Ontario. They're serious and somber and they cram as much world news as possible into about an hour of programming, which almost always includes some stony-faced reporter standing in the middle of a war zone delivering a status report. BBC reporters have been killed out on the field before. The thing about the BBC is that it doesn't need to be gimmicky to attract ratings because it's comfortably funded by TV licensing. The BBC do not look for "scoop" or sensationalize breaking news or act on anonymous tips from assassins or send two clueless idiots to an event as big as a papal conclave. It's so painfully obvious that, disregarding any cultural differences between America and Europe, of which there are hundreds, Brown simply googled "British news networks" and search-replaced the BBC into this laughable, lovable brick of a novel.)

In between Vittoria being a sexy Mediterranean and the Hassassin being a Big Bad Brown Man we have this dreadful hokey plot with more holes than, ironically, Swiss cheese - considering that one of the most prominent Swiss characters' surnames is "Olivetti" and our hero survives a fall from three miles up with nothing but a small tarp as a parachute, and real-life CERN is graciously putting up with this total crusade of slander and misinformation involving the shape of pillars, their teaching facilities, and the purpose of the Large Hadron Collider. Look, people were irrationally mad enough about the LHC without Dan Brown pulling out his copy of National Geographic and fanning the flames.

Robert and Vittoria go on this bullshit quest across Rome to locate the Church of Illumination, for some reason, which leads to all sorts of insane conspiracy claims and both of them jumping to the most ridiculous conclusions in order to find the path that ultimately leads to a painfully obvious location that, after years of preservation, study and reconstruction, someone should have already found inside the Castel Sant'Angelo. They then kill a person, and nobody follows up on this - doesn't the person who found the Hassassin's body lying crumpled on a pile of cannonballs think there's maybe something fishy going on? - and there's a huge twist at the end that is so utterly ridiculous and predictable that it brings up the taste of yesterday's lunch.

Where exactly does Dan Brown get off creating books like this one? Books with no integrity, no soul, and no finesse? There is nothing good about this book, and yet it's constructed in such a way that it's virtually impossible to abandon. The constant cliffhangers give this extremely convoluted and silly novel a crack-like quality that is unmatched by any other. I've read some seriously addictive books, but this one takes the fucking cake.

I'm not sure why I bothered sticking with this book until the bitter end. It amused me, I suppose. That's probably why. By the final few chapters, I was literally shouting at the book. I kept thinking, "this needs to end. This fucking book needs to be gone from my life." And yet...I continued to read? Like a madwoman? Well, then. A book marketed and constructed with that much psychological witchery deserves a pat on the back. Never have I ever been so sucked in by something so filled with pompous, pretentious, mansplained crap. That's right, actually; this book should have just been called 'Mansplaining'. Because that's basically what it is. Jesus fucking Christ.

I have a warm place in my heart for books about special snowflake Americans arriving on their white horses to rescue the rest of the world from themselves. I find them cute. They're certainly entertaining, like a preteen diary, and this one in particular; Brown wants so desperately to be Langdon that it hurts. But where's the harm in all that? Sure, this book is filled with racism and sexism and ethnic stereotyping and pretentious philosophical twaddle but it's not starting any wars. It's no worse than anything on television or anything written for a YA audience of late. I let myself get lost in it for an hour or two, and that was kinda nice. And for all the book's faults, it inspired an absolutely awesome movie. Seriously - the movie was excellent and they cut almost all of the bullshit tumors out for the screenplay which made for two hours of pretty painless entertainment. No mean feat considering the source material.

I guess how much you'll enjoy this book depends on how many cheesy yoga jokes you're willing to put up with. Let that be a lesson to you all: when in doubt, or when licking lightbulbs seems like a worthier pastime, leave it out....more

A cute, unassuming sort of manga with a nice mix of characters, strong dialogue and an easily-followed plot. It moves with a sort of slow burn, but itA cute, unassuming sort of manga with a nice mix of characters, strong dialogue and an easily-followed plot. It moves with a sort of slow burn, but it kept me hooked and I read this volume in one sitting.

I've seen better art, but it wasn't offensive or off-putting in any way. A little distracting, maybe; the anatomy is bizarre at times and I can't say I like the facial style, but Tachibana does a great job of conveying emotion, particularly awkwardness.

Oh, don't get me wrong. It's not for everyone. Certainly not the faint-hearted. My recommendation field above should doI loved this manga. Loved it.

Oh, don't get me wrong. It's not for everyone. Certainly not the faint-hearted. My recommendation field above should do it. But I just...I loved it.

I wasn't exactly sure what it would entail when I picked it up. I was chilling with Good Friend a few days ago - and Good Friend happens to be a connoisseur of fine manga.

Well, okay. I stopped eating up Good Friend's manga recommendations a while ago, after the Kuroshitsuji and Uraboku incidents (they were hellish, was what the incident was. UGH) but when she repeatedly insisted that Crimson Spell was the shiz, I decided to lift her probation and give it a shot. I cautiously took it from her hands and warned, "This had better be good."

"It is. It's BL high fantasy."

I stared at it. "I'm not sure..."

Thus Good Friend gave me the Just Read It, Bitch glare so I threw the manga in my bag and promised that this time, I'd try to like it. Try hard.

I didn't really need to.

The art was what really did it for me. It was really, really stunning. Sure, there were a few points where the anatomy was just weird; Val's arms were often inexplicably long, and there were a few instances in which someone's neck was at an awkward angle, or whatever. Another little gripe was the absolutely breakneck introduction of the world at the beginning. Within about four pages Val's castle has been invaded, he's been cursed, he leaves the castle and meets Havi. And that's not just at the beginning. One moment we're tripping along and then FLASH! Three weeks have gone by and I'm lost again.

I won't lie. A good chunk of my reading time of this manga was spent in total confusion, along the lines of, "Who's going where? To do what? Why?" That said, this might just be me. I have form for being unable to follow most high fantasy novels. As I've said before, I've only really enjoyed two high fantasies before, and they aren't published.

(This being the reason why I haven't touched Game of Thrones.)

I feel bad criticizing. As I said, this is a great manga. It's yaoi, sure, but it's not a huge angry sex fest filled with disproportionate penises and super-shiny latex (I'm looking at you, Starfighter*). There's an extremely involved, complicated plotline to follow, with a whole cast of complex and likable characters, and of course, some angsty, sexy, epic, over-the-top romance. It feels unfair to categorize this simply as BL fluff. First and foremost, I'd call it adult high fantasy.

There's something to be said for a series that keeps me reading and reading and reading, no matter how irritated it's making me, no matter how furiousThere's something to be said for a series that keeps me reading and reading and reading, no matter how irritated it's making me, no matter how furious I am with the characters, no matter how idiotic the romance is, and no matter how crushingly depressed it's making me. There's something to be said for a book that still gets four stars from me despite making me want to swallow a whole box of Niquil and take a nap for a year.

Take Karou. She's quirky, cool, popular. She's got a secret tooth-mongering life and her family is a hodgepodge of demonic deities whose appearances burst straight out of some antique high fantasy adventure saga. God, if I could write fantasy like Laini Taylor does, I'd be like Dan Brown and sleeping on a pile of money every night and laughing at some hi-larious joke my good friend Tom Hanks just cracked while servants offered us hot towels with which to wipe the caviar off our hands. The characters in this book are just so inspired. How do you go about dreaming all of this up? How do you conjure this sort of kaleidoscopic, dream-state world building? There are so many threads. So many layers. How do you do it? Do you pop a molly, open a word document with Pan's Labyrinth reeling in the background, and let it go? Don't hold it back anymore? Let it go, let it go, turn away and slam the door?

(Okay, I fucking love Frozen. It's my life and I know every word to every song. I told you not to judge me.)

Mik and Zuzanna were pointless but cute, and to be fair, they didn't really need to serve a purpose as characters. One character who did need to serve a purpose but didn't was Akiva, and let me get this straight right off the bat so that no one is under any sort of false pretenses: I hate Akiva. I hate Akiva like I hate those snapchat nerds who refused to sell when they were offered three billion dollars for some shitty little app that I can't even fucking work. Guys, a chimpanzee could create a picture messaging app that isn't even as fast as kik. I mean, if the Vine guys turned down a three billion dollar offer I'd understand because stuff like this is worth triple that amount, plus my first born child, plus some sort of soul exchange like they had in that movie, what was it called? The Skeleton Key?

Look, it's not even that Akiva is two-dimensional, and his and Karou's relationship has absolutely no basis whatsoever than both of them being hot. It's also not about how he thinks he loves Madrigal but what they had was sex, not love. It's the arrogance of him. It's just the entitlement of it: he arrives at the party Madrigal is attending and when he sees her dressed up, he decides that it's all for his benefit, and she must have been expecting him, because clearly we haven't been diligent enough in convincing girls that the clothes they put on their bodies are for men's benefit, and that their bodies are public property. I'm not sure why I'm surprised by this, because the chances of finding a piece of media that isn't in some way thematically problematic are slim, but still. We could all stand to try a little harder.

(We could all stand to take a step back and think about what it says when we praise and praise and praise a series that is, at its core, about how genocide is totally forgivable as long as the person who did it is really sorry and, like, was really sad and stuff. But that isn't really a fair criticism for this book; it's about this series as a whole, so let's not jump the gun.)

There's also this whole thing where Akiva tries to kill Karou, then creepily watches her while she'd sleeping, and suddenly they're in love after meeting each other a handful of small times and exchanging perhaps four angsty words. Who is eating this up? Why? We didn't put up with it when Kate and Adornetto did it, so why are we putting up with it now? Why are we putting up with another story in which an arrogant man decides that a pretty girl must be his and so stalks and frightens her until she falls into his arms? What the fuck is with this?

Emphasis on "pretty" needs to be discussed, too. This book adores physical beauty in flagrante and it isn't afraid to tell you straight up that if you're ugly, then you can fuck falling in love. You can fuck having an interesting story to tell. You may as well sit on someone else's back and suck their soul out. And when they've lost their soul, they'll be ugly too, because ugly people are evil and pretty people are the bestest.

This book also wants you to know that low self-esteem is beautiful too. Madrigal is annoyingly unaware of how stunning she is and apparently that makes her all the more lovely. We're kind of narrowing the dream pool here. You can only be happy or interesting or powerful if you're beautiful, but in order to be "good", you have to hate yourself for it. Thiago knows he's beautiful, so he's immediately the villain. Madrigal? Oh, she doesn't have a clue. She's a primrose of lovely unhappiness.

It's just so fucked in the head. Don't you think that's fucked in the head? I do. Though...ugh. Level with me. No matter how hard this book stumbles, I just can't bring myself to deduct another star. The writing was too haunting and lovely, and the mythology was too inspired, and the palpable love the author has for the story just bled too profusely from the pages. You can feel how invested she is. You can taste it. And I love that. I love it so much. Being able to smell the hours of pleasure and inspiration that were baked into a book, and to just know in your heart that an author truly and deeply cares. It's utterly beautiful.

I could keep waxing angry about the fucked-up themes of this book for hours, but this book really isn't any worse than the other offenders within its genre. (I could also sigh about the silliness of 'Prague, a storybook city stuck in the eighteenth century" but I won't. It's just a Quaint Little Europe cliche and it really isn't hurting anyone.) Actually, no; that's not quite right. It isn't that this book is "no worse". It's a lot better, really, in that it doesn't feel like it was thrown together within a couple of weeks, slapped with a pretty cover and sold as a 'forbidden love story for fans of Stephanie Meyer'. I'm being unfair, aren't I?

This book is not perfect, but I think about it often, and deeply. I think about certain words and wonder what the author was thinking when she wrote them down; I think about the titles, and how perfectly they dovetail with what's behind them; I think about Karou, and Brimstone, and Issa, and Kishmish, and even Akiva. It isn't necessary to like a character. It isn't even necessary to understand them. It's only necessary to be compelled by them, and I was compelled by every word on these pages.

This book is like those little sachets of Nutella you get as free samples with like a magazine or a packet of Ritz or something, in that it's empty caThis book is like those little sachets of Nutella you get as free samples with like a magazine or a packet of Ritz or something, in that it's empty calories lite but seriously delicious. It's really small and really bad for you and not really that satisfying but shit if you don't enjoy it. Because, no matter how superior you think your tastes are, you will enjoy this. Even just on a voyeuristic level. You just have to forget all of the stuff you know. Like, all of it. Forget what you learned in civics class and don't you dare remember even one page of that history textbook that your teacher shoved under your nose when you were eleven. Don't untangle those headphones; don't try to line up the yellow smarties. This book is a house of cards. Really cool to look at, but totally flimsy.

(And the controversy is such a shame. It's a shame that the creative minds behind this lovably fluffy duck-down are the sort to hurl expletives at honest, non-inflammatory reviewers via Twitter, which is literally the weakest way to attack someone, because were your reasons so flimsy that they wouldn't fill out more than 140 characters? Come on.)

Personal shitstorms aside, this book has about as much class and substance as its creators, but that's isn't to say that it didn't nicely pad out a two-hour train journey from Dundee to Glasgow. That commute, especially on a Friday lunchtime, is a snore. Add that to a tiny waif of a story with all of the addictive allure of crack and you've got two covers that you can turn in one single sitting.

I'm not going to lie to you and say that I didn't have preconceived notions about this one; I mean, come on. The social drama was embarrassing. Add that to a name like "America Singer" and you've got a character I'm expecting to hate. But the thing was that I totally didn't.

I have a bit of a problem with those who expect teen girls in YA books to behave like street-smart successful thirty-year-olds with enough life experience to be able to judge any situation with a clinical and businesslike edge. I know I wasn't like that when I was sixteen, and neither were you. When I was sixteen I fell in love with a supply teacher and thought that having chipped nail polish made me look edgy.

America is kind of like me. She's probably kind of like you, too. She's over-dramatic and foolishly optimistic and she gets swept up by a single kind action from a cute boy. So what? She's a teenage girl. She's also careful, restrained and compassionate. She doesn't swallow bullshit like it's Orange Julius. She's believable. I'm not usually a huge fan of the whole "I'm special because I'm plain" which this whole book does use as a giant smoke screen for its sexism: there's the inevitable conversation in which someone says that big groups of girls always means there's snarky bitching and tons of competition, which doesn't hang together at all if you look at what is perpetuating this competition. Cass gives us commentary on girls and their competitiveness without actually tackling the reasoning behind that, which is of course a society whose foundations rely on a lack of camaraderie between women and this idea that in terms of relationships, men come first.

Who is funding, perpetuating, and benefitting from the Selection? Maxon, who will gain a wife, and the king, who will solidify his dynasty. The queen is merely there for decoration; she says and does nothing of import. This book, had it not been the Nutella free sample of dystopia in which there's no greater peril than running out of bow tie pasta and having to resort to lasagne sheets, could have been a fantastic allegory for the way in which women compete and are punished for it, when in fact it is men and male benefactors specifically who both incite and perpetuate said competition. We are supposed to hate Celeste because she's our stereotypical heartless mean girl - and YA caters only to the insecurities of those who are visually plain, placing girls who wear lipstick into a terribly unflattering light and only exacerbating "types of girls" - when in fact Celeste and her desperation to climb the social ladder is a blinding example of what this patriarchal power imbalance between men and women has created in Cass's world. That is, the idea that male acceptance and male pleasure has infinitely greater value than that of women. This idea that men and romance comes first, and female friendships threaten that, and get her! Tackle her! Don't let that *hussy* steal your man! He's all that gives you value, remember?

Calling out "all my friends are guys, there's less drama because girls are bitches" gives me immense satisfaction. When I hear that self-important special snowflake shit it makes me want to hurl. Is that any way to speak about your fellow woman? Do you understand the waves that women can make when they work together?

This book is nowhere near as bad in this area as it could have been - but we weren't spared disapproving glances at Bariel's breasts or the constant commentary on Celeste and her ridiculously exaggerated competitive antics. Do me a favour and spare me another wasted concept, because there's no peril to this, and because there's no peril, the story has no weight. None of these girls are being forced to do this. There's monetary gain involved but America's family are not exactly begging for scraps, are they? Why on earth we're watching a middle-class girl agonize so deeply over a silly competition that she chose to enter is beyond me. What's further beyond me is the whole caste system, and why it's even in place, and why this book is a dystopia. This could have been a four-star read for me had it been set in a high fantasy world, maybe in a kingdom called Candy Land where everything was frivolous and silly with an undercurrent of darkness and social instability.

But let's look at the technicalities of this. We have a competition with no negative outcomes that everyone adores except the faceless "rebels" who lack any real presence and who are portrayed as nasty barbarians when in fact what they're rebelling against is fat cats sitting in a palace eating fruitcake while children in the lower castes starve. The prince for whom they're competing is hot and charming and sweet. Goddamn, nothing about this is dystopian. You might look at the poverty pointedly but is the poverty ever explored in any meaningful way? Is there ever any real commentary attached to it? No.

Let's cut out some plot tumours. Add in some polygamy. What if we took this fluffy frothy dystopia lite and added in a little danger? What if? What if the king, a nasty creepy dude, wants a new wife every year? He already has twenty or so. So let's say that each year he holds a Selection to choose a new one. Girls are picked based on their photographs. They are forced into the competition against their will. When America arrives, she must fight through a competition for the heart of a man she loathes, surrounded by girls at whom she initially looks through a judgemental lens, before realizing that they are all doing what they can to survive, and forming powerful bonds with them; each girl who is struck off from the competition is executed, because the king will not allow another man in the kingdom to marry a girl he has touched. Meanwhile, rebels march on cities around the southern rim of the country in the name of avenging the daughters and sisters they have lost to the Selection. Meanwhile, America is torn between secretly loving the boy she knew outside the competition, whose family has pointedly joined the rebels, and falling for Prince Maxon, the king's seventeenth son, who lives in the shadow of the king's first son and heir. What if?

Jesus, just add some fucking peril to your dystopia. "But it's light and fluffy! It's not meant to be serious!" you say. Newsflash: dystopia is a really goddamn serious genre. Dystopia is a genre that is built around social commentary. Don't you dare come in and fluff up a genre that was created as a platform for authors to offer creative, intelligent critique and discourse on some of the most controversial and powerful social issues in the real world. Dystopia is a gift; dystopian stories can make us better people. This is not a dystopia. It is just silly.

Honestly? This book could have been so much more. It could have been powerful and groundbreaking. It's not like the writing was anything special (in some places, it's just plain bad. This book is filled with some of the most unnatural and stilted dialogue I have ever read) or that any of the characters, even those I liked (Maxon was an unexpected favourite of mine, even if he is a two-faced spineless dingbat), grabbed my attention enough to make me give a crap. It's just one big pile of wasted potential. And I am so suspicious of authors who say that they "write without agenda" because one cannot claim to do impossible things. Every single piece of writing in existence has agenda, big or small, powerful or menial. Don't say that you just wanted to write a little light-hearted dystopia that nobody should take too much to heart. Don't. Don't do that. Don't do what Lauren DeStefano did when she wrote about rape and polygamy and forced marriage and sex with thirteen year olds and then claimed that there was no social commentary behind it, and that she wasn't trying to say anything with her writing. The fuck?

Don't fuck with really serious issues and then try to wriggle out of readers' concern or curiosity by claiming that you "didn't mean anything by it". That's lazy and also sort of insulting.

All of that said, don't be too surprised by my three-star rating. I'm sorry, but I couldn't award less to a book that engrossed me so, and that was such guilty fun. I was absolutely hypnotized....more

So today I was standing around in the kHuge thanks to Julianna Helms for loaning me her ARC. Everybody go and give Julianna a cyber hug right now. GO.

So today I was standing around in the kitchen in my underwear frosting cupcakes, and as I stared vacantly out of the window over the sink, I wondered, "What if I looked up and there was a zombie standing out there?"

I frequently wonder this. Call me crazy, but when I finally peel myself away from my manuscript at about 3:30 in the morning and I let the dog out one last time, I bristle and wonder if, when I open the door, I'll hear that tell-tale ominous moan that marks the dawn of the apocalypse. What weapon would I use? A lamp? A chair leg? That piece of wood that the landlord inexplicably left leaning up against the back door before she was fired from caring for our property?

The dog?

Either I've been watching too much television, or I'm an idiot. Those are the only two options.

Well, actually, you could always consider that perhaps my imagination is just inflated; that's neither a bad thing nor good. Alright, being incredibly imaginative does have its perks, especially when you're looking into joining the authorship train, but it also lends itself to crazy shit like this. You know, looking under your bed for ghouls before you get into it. Peering behind the curtains to make sure there isn't a demon waiting there only to jump out and lop your head off when you aren't looking.

You lop someone's head off, bitch ain't going to be looking at anything.

An imagination of the wild variety is the only thing that could have given birth to something as unique, colorful and adventurous as the Legend series. This is, most likely, one of my favorite series ever. It is absolutely fantastic.

And Prodigy just blew Legend, its predecessor, right out of the water. It is better than Legend.

The characters probably aren't the best display of wild imagination; they're bright, great fun to follow and wonderfully rounded but I can't say they're the freshest tilapia on the chopping block. I'd say what really got me about this book and what really sold it to me was the intricacy and pace of the mind-bending plot.

It moves at an absolutely breakneck speed, but somehow, probably through the beauty and skill of Marie's writing, it touches you. The dialogue, romance, deaths and action struck a real chord with me and pulled me in from the beginning. I opened this book and I literally could not stop reading until I was finished. I was forced - nay, compelled to keep turning pages and find out where the plot would move next, which was off the chess board, under the table and into the middle of the road where it caused a huge pile-up and several thousand awesome explosions. Reading this book is like being strapped into fucking Oblivion and forced to complete six rounds of it while someone holds a gun to your head and says, "If you pee your pants, I will shoot you."

A quick low-down is that June and Day, our heroes, head to Las Vegas where they're welcomed into the fold of the Patriots, who are anti-Republic revolutionaries. They begin hatching a plan to assassinate the new Elector, a young hot one who came into power after the old Elector suddenly died. This plan involves June and Day being pushed around like chess pieces, and along the way they discover secrets about the plan, the Republic and themselves that forces them to question everything they believe is true.

The love square was fucking awesome. (view spoiler)[My GOD, I want June to be with Anden in the next book. The whole thing was left hanging at the end, and as much as I love Day, I just...UGH. Anden. I fucking love that guy. He's absolutely gorgeous. However, I do not want Day and Tess to be together. It's just weird. They don't make a good match at all. (hide spoiler)]

But man - the twists in this book left me reeling. At the beginning I was all cocky, thinking I had it all sorted out, but by halfway through I was on the edge of my seat gnawing my fingernails down to the quick, because the plot veered in so many shocking directions that I just didn't know what was going to happen next. And the ending! The ending completely blindsided me. I didn't know what the hell to make of it. It just happened, this huge bombshell, and I was left reeling.

How do you deal with that shit? And I can't even spoil it for you all and tell you what happens until January! This sucks!

I said before that the plot surpassed the characters, but that's not to say the cast of this story wasn't a shining beacon of gloriousness. As usual to begin with we had a little problem with June and Day sounding the same but after a while they grew into their habits, and I could separate their voices. Once you know the characters well enough to pick up on their subtle mannerisms, it becomes easy to determine who's inner monologue is who's.

There are just so many awesome characters in Prodigy. Razor was fascinating, and as usual Kaede's spunk had me snorting into my coffee. June and Day are very solid protagonists, each flawed but entirely lovable. They work as a great team, sparring off one another. They're both capable, intelligent, interesting heroes that I found myself really invested in.

Their romance is something I'm still on the fence about, but the emotive element is there and it shows. They have chemistry, enough to make me buy their affection, but I can't say I was blown away by the romantic element. Still, the great thing about this series is that the romance is not a central part of the storyline, and if it were omitted, the series would still be as compelling and fun to follow.

The secondary characters made the cast for me. I was absolutely heartbroken about Metias, and the truth about his death. (view spoiler)[Oh, hell to the no! As if Metias's death wasn't tragic enough. We're now hit in the face with the revelation that he was actually in love with Thomas, who then went on to kill him because he was ordered to by Commander Jameson. Okay, so part of me wants to believe that he couldn't have done it and he's lying to protect...someone, and because he never really gave a direct...oh, who the fuck am I kidding. Thomas is deplorable. He knew that Metias was in love with him and he killed him anyway. I know he felt that he had no choice but for fuck's sake, Thomas obviously loved Metias back and what he died was unforgivable. What a piece of shit. (hide spoiler)] It was awful, painful, brutal. And that's the essence of it; this book is written with so much heart and skill that in a few sentences you can become so invested in a character or backstory that it just pulls you in. I had such a strong emotional reaction to Metias. Even dead, he played a huge part in the rest of the book, and I loved that. I loved that the relationship between he and June remained a part of the story and a part of her motivation.

Other characters, such as the hilariously wonderful Pascao and sweet little Tess added lovely gold embellishments to what was already a great story. The only character-based gripe I have is that I'm unsure what Commander Jameson's role was in this book. I felt like she needn't have been there - she really added nothing to the conflict. Just a minor nitpicky thing there.

The writing was spectacular, the plotline tight and beautifully paced, the characters colorful and brilliantly crafted. The ending broke my heart, but at this point I'm wondering where the series has left to go. Prodigy has an extremely interesting ending, in that it ties up most if not all loose ends. I'm curious to find out what could possibly happen next, so I'm of course going to wait with baited breath for the third installment, and probably enter into some kind of Hunger Games-esque duel in order to acquire an ARC. I cannot wait two years for the next book. I will die. I will actually die.

I mean, I just...

The ending.

THE ENDING.

*There's only two days to go and I can't hold on any longer and I have to say it, but if you look at this fucking spoiler tag before you read the book I will hunt you down and make you sorry.*

(view spoiler)[OH MY GOD, when Kaede died I cried a river and then some. How is this? How? How is it even...? Why did...? I don't even...? And then Day has a brain tumor and it's inoperable, and despite knowing for absolutely sure that someone will find a way to save him in the last book, because he's Day and he's a special snowflake, I'm still sitting in a corner jittering in terror. How could you do this to me, Marie Lu? Did I hurt you in some way? Are you punishing me personally? Fuck this. Fuck that. Fuck everything! Let me go cry again because the agony is like a crocodile chewing on my soul. (hide spoiler)]

Excuse me while I lie in a snotty, sweaty, sobbing heap on the floor, clutching a frosting can full of my feelings.

In short: this book is fucking amazing. When it comes out in January, you had all better get in line behind me to buy a hardback copy. Because I'm going to read this shit again. And again.

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**spoiler alert** Is it just me, or is anyone else really starting to like Haymitch?

Bet you didn't see this coming. Moi, Kira, reading Catching Fire a**spoiler alert** Is it just me, or is anyone else really starting to like Haymitch?

Bet you didn't see this coming. Moi, Kira, reading Catching Fire and giving it four stars!

The Hunger Games earned an uneasy 2.5 stars from me. The most annoying part? I wasn't 100% sure why. Katniss, probably. The almost absurd seriousness of her voice and her behavior toward Peeta tipped me (though I did have to give her kudos for being absolutely kick-ass). The cavalier treatment of Haymitch's alcoholism, the total lack of sensical world-building and the sentence fragments grated on me. I enjoyed it, yes; but love it, I did not.

I was all set to throw in the towel with this series. It's been a year since I read The Hunger Games, and I wasn't on any kind of tenterhook to find out what happened next. I'll admit, when I picked up Catching Fire it was with a sort of do-I-have-to groan, because it was practically thrust into my hand by a friend who is totally batshit crazy about these books and demanded I keep reading or die. So I cracked it open on pain of death and started reading.

The first seventy or so pages are ridiculously boring. Katniss and Peeta literally do nothing but travel around and eat. It was during this time, when there was no violence or gratuitous nudity or mildly sexual romantic tension to distract me, that those absolutely heinous sentence fragments really caught up with me.

Look, this book is obviously intended to be written as a stream of Katniss's consciousness, so I absolutely understand an abundance of fragments. But these fragments are nonsensical. I literally had to read some sentences five times just to understand what Katniss was trying to say, and let me tell you one thing: that's a fantastic way to totally alienate your reader from the narrative. The fragments would cut a perfectly comprehensible sentence into two incomprehensible halves.

Welcome to Logicville. Population: none.

So why'd I give this book four stars? Because I read it in something like two and a half days, and although the plotline felt repetitive, half-hearted and sort of a caper, it was just great. So much better than the first book. Let me say something: Suzanne Collins must be a brilliant dressmaker, because she has an uncanny talent for embellishing obnoxious things and making them seem 100% less ridiculous than they actually are.

This is the plot of this book. Katniss and Peeta hear rumblings of uprising among the Districts, meanwhile President Snow, for some strange reason, is still not satisfied with Katniss's show of fake love for Peeta (even though EVERYONE else - literally EVERYONE - is. Like, how much more convinced does he think the people need to be?). So this creates a lot of unnecessary conflict, while Katniss bounces between Gale and Peeta, even though she knows herself that she's not sexually attracted to Gale and at this point the reader is already fully aware that in the end, she's going to pick Peeta. How could she not? He practically has "I am a non-threatening love interest" tattooed across his forehead. This series is a lot of things, but unpredictable it is not.

So anyway, a Quarter Quell is announced, in which a male and female tribute from each District will be selected from the existing pool of victors, ergo, the folks who won will be in the arena again (and that, ladies and gentlemen, is what makes this book fucking great. The feeling of sheer betrayal from the Capitol's decision to haunt the victors with another Hunger Games is what carries this whole book). Yadda yadda, lots of violence, and then a bad guy turns out to be good and Katniss and Co. are all rescued from the arena, save for Peeta, who's been horribly abducted by the Capitol (tears for that).

Let's start with the love triangle, which this book pretty frequently relies on to supply tension. I've been pretty hard on the love triangle, but I really shouldn't have been: it doesn't convince me at all and to be honest I never felt any chemistry between Katniss and Gale or Katniss and Peeta, but at least it didn't feel tacked on. It felt premeditated and it does forward the plot, so kudos for that. Plus, the Katniss in this book is much more human, a Katniss I could better relate to. She's tough but emotional, self-assured yet apologetic, compassionate but practical. Her voice held a little note of sarcasm which I just loved, because I always felt that the maudlin narrative of the first book really did border on angsty and I can't deal with that shit. You feel me?

I better felt who Katniss was in this book, and as such, I felt like I could grow to care about Peeta and Gale as characters, though not as love interests - like I said before, I could've cared less who Katniss ended up with because none of the romantic relationships ever really interested me. Note that it is true what they say, that Gale and Peeta are practically the same character, except Gale tends to be irritatingly convenient in his reactions and tends to jump to the most nonsensical conclusions, so I do tend to prefer Peeta. I don't know what it is; Peeta's just lovely. And he's a little clumsy and awkward, which I find incredibly endearing.

Catching Fire sees Katniss and Peeta forced to participate in a second round of the Hunger Games. It's a Quarter Quell, which occurs every twenty-five years, and means the Gamemakers toss in a curveball to freak everyone the fuck out.

These Games were nowhere near as threatening as those in The Hunger Games. That was mainly what warmed me to the first book: the terror of entering the arena blind, unsure of what was going to happen next. In this book, the reaping happens in one paragraph, there are two pages of meals and dresses, and then they're straight into a particularly creative arena which was thrilling, but not frightening. My problem with these Games was that everything felt like it was moving very slowly. After the gong sounds, there wasn't the jump of the heart that occurred with Katniss's first Games. There was just Katniss falling, Katniss running, Katniss swimming, Katniss doing this and that. After she reaches the Cornucopia, there's time for some witty dialogue between her and the unspeakably fabulous Finnick Odair, and then they mosey on over to Peeta, pick their weapons with strategy, then wander into the jungle. Urgency? Oh, please.

So why was this book such a success, in comparison to the previous and more tense installment? Well, because the character development in this book is far superior to that of first one, in that each character feels more complex, each exchange of dialogue feels more natural, and somehow, for some reason, Peeta and Gale began to actually interest me as separate people in their own right. They felt necessary, like humans rather than big cardboard cut-outs of Liam Hemsworth and Josh Hutcherson*. In the first book, all of the characters go through the entire book without changing at all by the end. Katniss was already a hunter, Peeta was already a baker and painter, and Gale was already brooding and angsty. By the end of the games, nothing inside the characters had really changed. Katniss was still a hunter, Peeta was still a wet rag, and Gale...blah. Who cared about Gale at the end of the first book? Whatever. There wasn't a single character arc to be found. Just people doing stuff and that stuff causing other stuff.

So while The Hunger Games excelled in candy gore and adrenaline-charged action, this book has more substance. I felt like it mattered.

*Don't flame me, you little bitches. I read the book like a year before the movie came out, okay?

In essence, I felt like a lot of this book was kind of a caper. Well, maybe not quite a caper, but it was more like an adventure novel than a terrifying thriller. I loved the twists, especially Plutarch Heavensbee, which I did not see coming, not for a second. There was a lot of clothing description, which was great fun (hurrah for Katniss's mockingjay outfit! That was dope) and while a lot of the arena time felt sort of Tomb Raider-esque, it was wildly entertaining. That's the essence of Collins' writing, at least for me. Technically, it's kind of lame, but she knows how to put across a story with just enough heart to convince the reader to give a shit.

Despite the somewhat sweet-shoppish atmosphere of the Games, there were plenty of darker areas to this book. The Capitol's killing gentle Cinna, Katniss's hopeless entrapment in the Quarter Quell, Mags's death in the arena, the morphlings, Finnick's love for Annie and, most pungently for me, the glimpse of Haymitch's time in the arena. It was sickening, really; to throw back to teenage Haymitch, his connection with Maysilee, and his victory in the games after a disgustingly bloody battle with his final opponent. Guys, his intestines were literally hanging out and the girl was killed with an axe to the head. How anyone can still not like Haymitch after this is beyond me. This is the reasoning behind his alcoholism, his anti-social personality, and eventually (view spoiler)[his rebellion as he collaborates with Plutarch Heavensbee to get Katniss out of the arena and into District 13 (hide spoiler)]. Oddly, Katniss was one of the very people who expressed no sympathy whatsoever for Haymitch, despite witnessing his disturbingly awful stint in the arena when there were twice as many tributes as usual (Haymitch competed in the 2nd Quarter Quell). She's horribly judgmental, and apathetic toward him, and frankly, it left me irritated.

I may be the only person on the planet who actually likes Haymitch, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Needless to say, I absolutely fell in love with Finnick. Do I even need to say why? Nah. No need. It's Finnick. That's why I fell in love with him. Because he's Finnick.

The cliffhanger at the end of this book bothers me. I suppose it's that ingrained disgust for cliffhangers their sneaky little money-grubbing ploys, and the creepy marketing strategies behind them. You're literally trapping people into buying the next book. How about relying on the actual quality of the story to invite in readers for the next book in the series, rather than inadvertently begging them to line up at midnight for the release? It's just really, really jammy.

For shame, Scholastic.

P.S. The blurb for this book is a lie. Gale does not have an icy exterior, and Peeta does not, at any point, ever, turn his back on Katniss. Nobody ever turns their back on Katniss. They all love her too much.